Voices on the New Diasporas - an MIT student journal
Submission deadline for Spring 2008 issue is March 15, 2008.
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Hide and Seek by Ramya Rajagopalan, Graduate Student
Children need a place all their own. Secret hideaways, where expectations become possibilities. Imagined, there, is an escape from the real world, that terrifying state of being built from bits of conversation and experience and other debris that parents let slip into the folds of your life. When you grow up, the forces that crush are less tangible, less material, they are more insidious, creeping up on you like shadows in dark alleys. You run faster, nursing a mad yearning to"get away from it all," to disappear. Sometimes the only retreat is into yourself. The ultimate Houdini act. Who among us has not wished to fall off the face of the planet one day, with the caveat that we be allowed to return once our game of hide-and-seek is over?...
The Greyhound bus from Toronto creaks to a stop, nudging Vasu from his reverie. Shouldering his backpack, he steps off onto the road, finding himself in a middle-of-nowhere kind of place that could just as well be everywhere, anywhere, in much of southern Ontario, instead of home. A cloud of dust left by the retreating Greyhound envelopes him in the autumn wind. He can't tell if he is escaping into or out of. To return to the place of childhood is to be both ensnared by memory and set aflight by it.
Down the lane, then, on this brisk September afternoon, when the maple leaves whisper to each other, trying to agree when to abandon summer's greens and adopt reds, yellows and oranges. Ahead is the familiar cluster of houses and shops that constitute town. Tracing the southern edges are cornfields, at various stages in the progression through post-harvest shades of brown. And before long he is at the picket fence on which he lets his finger linger a split second too long, wistfully, as he thinks of summers spent repainting it with Alistair.
Inside, Marion is waiting for him. When she sees him, she bursts into a fresh flood. Vasu knows she has been crying; he can see it in the redness around her orbs, a crimson set aglow by the ashen pallor, and the sudden hollowness in the cheek that he has not noticed before. She rushes over to him, hugging him, smothering him.
Oh Vasu I knew you'd come as soon as I called I'm so happy you're here I can't bear this on my own It's been almost a day and not a word, not a word" She lets go and hangs tightly instead to his arm.
Vasu, with the stoic assurance demanded of him though inside he is as worried as her, gently frees his arm. "Marion we'll find him. Don't worry. Now I'm going to take my bag upstairs, and then you're going to tell me exactly what happened. There is a search party out right? Good. I'll be right down then."
*
The smell of memory: dusty.
Gently, he blows the flecks of age off, coughing as they billow back like wayward boomerangs into his nostrils. When the tickling of an imminent sneeze subsides, he blinks his eyes open to peer more closely at the black vinyl in his hands. The faded sticker grudgingly reveals the album info: "The Mamas and the Papas If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears." It is scratched; if he drops it, he is sure it will shatter along a hundred different faultlines. Despite urgency he cannot resist just one song; placing it gingerly, doubtfully on the turntable, he adjusts the arm precisely to the fifth song. The needle begins its journey through the melody of"Go Where You Wanna Go."
He looks around the room briefly. Through all his comings and goings, it has remained largely unchanged. His boxes of records. Model aeroplanes. A bookcase whose bottom two shelves are devoted to volumes of Indian histories and cultural explorations, all presents from Alistair and Marion over the years. A nameplate made in shop class, which says simply"Vasu." It is one of Krishna's many names. Krishna, who had also been given away, had also grown up a stranger to his birth parents. A mystery: who had chosen Vasu's name for him? "Three thousand miles that's how far you'll go, and you said to me please don't follow"
Is it not parents, who search for lost children? Alistair's disappearance has made it all backwards. What if the lost don't want to be found? What if Alistair wants it this way? But that is absurd. Alistair no longer knows what he wants, because he does not know what is missing.
*
Downstairs Marion's waterworks have diverted themselves somewhat to the task of making tea for him. The steaming water expands through the kitchen and condenses in the chill of the doorway where he stands. Her hair, he notices, has become an ode to grayscale, inflected with the wisdom of white. Crow's feet splay out from her eyes, like iron filings aligning around a bar magnet.
She watches as he drinks his tea and tells him how Alistair went missing. Early in the morning she had taken him into the garden and gone back into the kitchen to make breakfast, watching him through the window over the sink. A lapse of two minutes in her vigil and he had vanished, and hadn't been seen since. "It's all my fault. I don't know what I'd do without him. Where would he go? Why wasn't I watching?" She shakes her head, and the table responds just enough that tiny ripples pass over the liquid ceiling of his cup. "I even checked the tree at the end of the street," she says, an attempt at a smile.
You can never take back what you've said, you know. Those were the only words Alistair-the-high-school-teacher had ventured when he'd finally found 12-year old Vasu, sulking and confused in that tree. Life lesson, forgiveness, or both? Vasu still did not know and probably never would now. The crown of the tree had swayed on the tide of anger that lingered still, an anger that had swelled and challenged Alistair's right to tell him what he could and could not do. Not even his own father, how dare he? And worse name-calling, blind arrows that had hit their mark keenly. No, not arrows, boomerangs: slamming back into Vasu with the horrible realization that they could never be undone. But Alistair had been wrong in memory's absence, a retraction could be final.
I came back though, eh?" he says quietly.
Marion squeezes his hand. "Vasu, where could he be? I know he's close, I feel it, butbut it's as if he's invisible."
He has spent twenty precious minutes here when he could have joined the search. Marion reads his thoughts."Vasu you know this area as well as anyone else. You may have been away a few months but you know us, we've never changed very much. Maybe you could go have a look, you know, his old haunts, the hideouts you two were always running off to"
Yes," says Vasu,"Yes, I'll go have a look. Some fresh air will do me good. Sure you'll be ok here?" Her assent frees him.
*
Two options fight, or flight. Vasu had once been the offspring of the latter. He brushes leaves from between the wood slats of the gate; they recall to him a faded, wrinkled birth certificate found among his adoption papers in Alistair's desk, simply inscribed with his name, the date and time of his birth. The only connection to any past that predated him. The only proof that he had not simply materialized from the heavens, immaculately.
Out on the main road, Vasu tilts his head back and lets the sky wash over his face. Inhaling and then exhaling deeply, he feels the movement of air purge him of inactivity's colonizers dust appears only after neglect. He starts walking.
It was only when he had really left town for the first time, to go to university, that Vasu had discovered the company of other first and second generation peers. They had given him a proper introduction to the other-world intensity of Gerrard Street, the Little India of Toronto, over which hung a rich pungency: spices from the grocers' and curries from the restaurants, new fabric in sari stores, roasted peanuts and corn from the stalls of street vendors, Desi beats pounding from the music shops. You could get many things Indian there, but not everything.
When his friend Mohan went back to India over winter break, Vasu had asked him to secure a copy of the Panchangam, or Hindu almanac, for the year of his birth. His had evidently been an auspicious entry midnight on the day when the star Rohini was ascendant, in the fifth month (corresponding to mid-July to mid-August). The same stormy hour when the divinity Krishna had been born in human form, in a jail cell, to a mother in shackles. She and her husband had been imprisoned on their wedding day by her ruthless brother Kamsa, tyrant king of Mathura, who had been warned that at the hands of their eighth child he would perish for his life's misdeeds. Kamsa proceeded to execute each infant as it was delivered. But on the midnight when Krishna the eighth was born, the heavens conspired to lead the child to safety. The Goddess Maya wove her blanket of illusion, magically unlocking prison doors and sedating guards, while a tempestuous downpour raged outside. Krishna's father awoke in a powerful trance that gave him the strength to traverse the stormy Yamuna River with the boy in a basket on his head. On the other side in Gokul, Krishna was secretly exchanged with the newborn daughter of the village chieftain and his wife, a daughter who in the morning would transform into a goddess and warn Kamsa once again that his sister's eighth child would destroy him. When Krishna's father returned with this newborn to his shackles and to his sleep, all memory of that night's mysterious doings vanished, without a trace.
Krishna meanwhile slept peacefully as an exile, in the arms of parents who knew neither his secret identity, nor that he was not truly their own.
A birth at midnight in the fifth month under the star of Rohini is sometimes considered to be inauspicious for the child's maternal uncle. At times, Vasu still catches himself wondering about his mother's motives. Perhaps she too weighed the life of her son against that of a brother, finally deciding that maybe she didn't have to choose, if neither of them ever knew of the existence of the other
Somewhere along the main road Vasu has picked up a stray cat. Now it playfully tiptoes a few feet behind him, but stops in its tracks when Vasu turns around. Vasu pretends not to see it, and the cat is evidently satisfied that the game has been acknowledged.
The two pass by a lot where a local general store had been a year ago, now being bulldozed into history by a service station"coming soon". The high school is up ahead; Vasu briefly looks around and surveys the overgrown weeds on the abutting vacant lot; perhaps Alistair was drawn here by some force of habit too ingrained to have yet been erased. The cat follows a few paces behind. Vasu reaches back to pet it but it is skittish and deftly avoids him.
Rounding the bend Vasu sees and hears the search party and local police scattered up ahead. His heart skips a beat, then relaxes as a syncopated"Alistair?" echoes all around. So they have not found him yet. They are mostly familiar faces; among them are his longtime friend Steven's parents. He approaches Mrs. Woods, who embraces him in welcoming commiseration.
"Vasu - so good to see you dear. We're all terribly worried but we're sure he can't have wandered farHow have you been?" Mrs. Woods asks with concern.
"Fine, Mrs. Woods. Still haven't met up with Steven yet, since his move to Toronto."
Mr. Woods walks up from the search party. "We've looked almost everywhere within walking distance, Vasu. The bane and boon of a small town is that you have to try very hard to get lost..."
Vasu knows this only too well."Uh, has anybody checked near the lake?"
"Well now, the police were up there briefly I believe, but didn't find him there. Don't know that they trawled the water though." Mr. Woods breaks off.
Averted eyes, a silent mutual consent to leave possibilities unvoiced, dispel the awkwardness. Vasu heads into the field near the high school and out toward the lake.
*
The lakeshore is silent, save for the wind in the trees and the long grass that together slope down the hillside. A thin strip of wet sand and stone meets the water's edge. The cat will not venture into this space between, neither land nor water; it stops farther out and picks its way tentatively around grass and trees.
Vasu came here with Alistair and Marion two years ago for a little picnic, shortly after receiving the promotion to Assistant Curator at the museum in Toronto. Alistair had been so proud. The diagnosis came a year later.
He has never doubted that they adore him. Or in Alistair's case, did. What love or happiness means to Alistair now is anyone's guess. He marvels at Marion's strength of spirit, her unflagging understanding. She now expects nothing in return - a generosity Vasu cannot ever hope to possess.
Looking around, Vasu suddenly remembers the little hillock that houses The Cave, an overgrown hollow chunk of hill that Steven and Vasu had considered their own, until Alistair let slip once that he had always known about it. He heads toward it, now almost in desperation. PerhapsSmall waves lap gently against the shore, drinking its edges in deep gulps. He too swallows uncertainly, then peers around The Cave's entrance. Even the sun's reflection on the water below does not lighten its darkness. Stepping inside, he unconsciously brings his hand up to shield his eyes. His first sensation: the cave is drenched, not with sea water but with a full-bodied hum. Its hollows expand. "How sweet the sound" echoed over and over, like a broken record that's forgotten what comes next. An indistinct form huddled in the depths takes shape.
The hum abruptly stops. The cat sniffs the air tentatively, then boldly approaches the form, lets its tail curl out towards it, and sits."Oh you found me," Alistair says abstractedly, talking to a stone. Like North America might have said to Columbus.
Vasu gazes back out to the lake. "Were you lost?" he asks Alistair, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper.
Alistair sits against the mud wall of The Cave; his uniformly grey hair streaked with dirt, his pants and shirt rumpled to match. He is deeply intent on the stone but suddenly looks up."Oh hi. I'm Alistair. What brings you here?"
Come, let's take a walk," says Vasu, extending his hand.
Alistair starts to sing to himself again. "How sweeeeeeeet the sound" Vasu fears he will resist, but he gets up and reaches out and grabs the hand, a tight childlike grasp, as if he never wishes to let go. It makes Vasu want to stand here, forever.
